The anime project is to be produced by ufotable, and is intended as a celebration of the 10th anniversary of anime store Animate’s mascot character “Anime Tencho” (“anime store manager”), probably best known internationally for his appearances on Lucky Star, although otherwise his anniversary is likely a matter of supreme indifference even to Japanese anime fans.

God darn it. When I finally thought that an anime was finally official. Tch, Zun should just make his own anime company and make the anime himself along with creating the animation itself and voicing all the roles. This guy has enough money for that, right?

The story would at best be a widely known doujin and now more canon that the touhou futa I fapped to last night.

More, the legal mess concerning this seems rather horrifying. From my knowledge, if this IS a non-doujin commercial endeavor, and ZUN DOESN’T enforce his copyright, he would probably lose his rights to the series and be banned from making future Touhou games…

That is really not how international copyright works. Just because you let someone use your works doesn’t mean you have lost the rights to do it yourself, unless you explicitly sign over the rights. Zun is not in danger of losing his intellectual property. Not legally, in any case.

And yes, I am getting a bad feeling from this as well. If this actually airs on TV, and/or they don’t make it blatantly clear that its a derivative work it will be in violation of Zun’s little set of rules. That sets kind of a bad precedent if that is indeed what is happening.

By the way, why the hell hasn’t this article been updated? Zun himself has said on his twitter that he doesn’t know that the fuck is going on.

I’ll agree I learned about touhou from Suika’s mugen character I found out about on a youtube video and then downloaded off mugen infantry.
I then found artwork and the wiki after searching her name and then decided to try ESoD and IaMP.

that is correct
I for example only learned of Touhou when I saw a random artwork of Remillia and then the fan made anime episode.
later I actually tried the games, only the fighting ones cause I am scared of shoters

Update 2: On Friday, Touhou Project creator ZUN posted on his Twitter account that the “Anime Tenchou x Touhou Project” anime is a derivative work, so he does not know the details about it. Later on Friday, a Twitter user named show_fb asked ZUN about the “Ikebukuro Hakurei Jinja” entity that is listed in the copyright notice for an image of the “Anime Tenchou x Touhou Project” anime. ZUN replied that he is not involved in that entity, and added that he thinks it is a pen name for the people drawing art in the derivative work.

Update 2: On Friday, Touhou Project creator ZUN posted on his Twitter account that the “Anime Tenchou x Touhou Project” anime is a derivative work, so he does not know the details about it. Later on Friday, a Twitter user named show_fb asked ZUN about the “Ikebukuro Hakurei Jinja” entity that is listed in the copyright notice for an image of the “Anime Tenchou x Touhou Project” anime. ZUN replied that he is not involved in that entity, and added that he thinks it is a pen name for the people drawing art in the derivative work.

Will most likely be just like what happened to Black Rock Shooter. A lot of hype, postponements and eventually end up with a single OVA that don’t meet most of the people’s expectations because of too much ‘moe shit’.

I am interested in this though, but it will probably be a single episode for a festival in the end.

Oh for the love of Kami-sama, not again. I guess Zun can’t hold this back from going full mainstreem this time around. *sigh* Although are the fans giving mixed reviews on this having an “Official” release set or not?

Then, like any “Videogame to movie” there will be vocal, screaming trolls who scream how “Debased” it was…

Most notably “Super Mario Brothers”…

Really, imagine the game being done in “Live Acton” literally… The deformed “Mushroom Men” being “Gooshed”, Mario breathing fire, ripping turtles out of their shells… But done as if “Real” not “pixellated cartoon”… A man running sideways most/all of it jumping and smashing bricks.

People would literally run from the theater screaming… And those that stayed would laugh and laugh and laugh…. And the “Critics” would go “All they need is an Oil Wheel Projector and we’ve got a 1.5 hours LSD trip…a BAD one…”

So, likewise, while there probably needs to be some “Bullets/energy blasts/knives fill the screen” action, there also has to be character interaction, development, perhaps a hot lesbian scene. Like to see the Knife Crazy maid “Clean” either of the main characters with her tongue!!!

More precisely, the lack of any objection is apparently sufficient approval for a commercial anime studio to adapt the anime, and hence is as “official” as anything gets where secondary Touhou works are concerned.

Crap getting made into tv Anime now. I don’t know why people are saying touhou isn’t well known. Have you been outside at all? In the number of cons I go to ever year, there been a good amount of cosplayers and panels of touhou. Over all I’m sure this will make the fanbase even worst, if it can get any worst that is…

Am I the only person that thinks this is a bad idea? People are going to overhype this, then realize the anime is nothing but a shame to make more money.

Then this is going to be split by two camps. The moe moe group that love anything touhou that wouldn’t mind staring at the screen of still pictures of cirno flashing by, and the ones that realize the anime version did not live up to the hype, but don’t really care because it’s touhou.

Well, there was nothing on his blog about this and I doubt there will.
I bet he just silently agreed like with every Touhou doujin project.
The only time he rejected someone, was when Ryukishi07 wanted to do a joint project with him.

I don’t think he will sell Touhou (and the fans) out. At least I got the impression that he isn’t that kind of person. Even if he needed money, there are other ways for him to make some money without screwing the canon.

The best we can do is wait until an official statement by ZUN and see if it’s really a commercial anime release and, in that case, see what kind of agreement he had with the anime studio that will produce it.

@Anonymous: So, he said anything about this anime being official or nothing for now?

Wow Artefact, just wow. Do you even understand what “official” means? There’s no difference in determining what is official in Touhou than any other series that gets fan works (which is pretty much ANY series).

If Zun created it, wrote it, helped plan it, or even gave it the green light as official, it is official. If not, then it is not. I’d say thats pretty fucking straight forward.

And no, before you even start, Touhou is not made of the fan stuff. The best stuff ever made for the series is STILL the core stuff. Everything else is just icing on the cake, tiding us over until the next game or manga venture. As it should be for any series.

Well, he hasn’t actually condemned any of his derivatives, although the maikaze anime did get a little close. I can safely say that the original games, the music CDs, the books written by ZUN(bohemian archive in japanese red, etc), the tasofro-shanghai alice co-operations, the manga co-authored by him are official. Although that being said some of them like “inaba of the earth and inaba the moon” pretty much blur the line in terms of how much poetic license the co-authors are given. I am quite certain that within the fanbase perceptions of official or derivative exist. That being said I don’t think this is a big point worth quibbling over(think ZUN saying that everything, literally, is a derivative anyway). ^^;

Anyway, I appreciate that you find that “official” doesn’t apply to touhou. Kindly take off the word “official” from the first par of your post.

The real issue here is whether this will be any good or be as lame as that Imperishable Night spinoff anime.

This is most strange. Suddenly all mention of any Touhou Project has vanished from animate’s website although you can still see it mentioned on the ufotable’s homepage.

I think they withdrew the notice in panic after ZUN denied it being official.

This is NOT AN OFFICIAL PROJECT. ZUN SAYS IT’S A DERIVATIVE(READ: DOUJIN) I see what you did there, artefact. Bad reporting is bad.

Quote from anon below:

No, he hasn’t.

Update 2: On Friday, Touhou Project creator ZUN posted on his Twitter account that the “Anime Tenchou x Touhou Project” anime is a derivative work, so he does not know the details about it. Later on Friday, a Twitter user named show_fb asked ZUN about the “Ikebukuro Hakurei Jinja” entity that is listed in the copyright notice for an image of the “Anime Tenchou x Touhou Project” anime. ZUN replied that he is not involved in that entity, and added that he thinks it is a pen name for the people drawing art in the derivative work.

Touhou had been invading the world from their original shooting games to doujinshi.They been on million fanarts,old games remix(old games characters had been replaced by Touhou characters liked megamari).All thanks to one man,ZUN.

Now,Touhou got their own anime now.I just hope they don’t screw up with the characters,plots and voice-actings.If not,im gonna sue the company. =D

i see what you mean.
Touhou had always been about fan-made doujinshi and games from the original shooting bullet-hell games.Seen this as an “official” after for a long time been just game and fanarts.
We just wait and see,hopefully this turn out to be a great anime.

OMG i know it will come sooner or later, but to be honest i’m against it

u see touhou grew large because of VARIOUS doujin manga, games, fan made fiction, *cough* H-things *cough*, etc. Seeing this is “official” that means this will be a standart animation that’ll go out there.

and as we know anime made from games/LN/manga isn’t always success and sometimes become a big disappointment for it fans…what i fear is that this’ll became a faillness and bring heart break for other touhou fans out there..

forgive me being paranoid, i’m just dont wanna hear somebody says “i heard alot bout touhou but after i watch the anime, i think its just a crap” line like that… OTL